


Fernweh

by Framlingem



Series: Where No Woman fics [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Backstory, Community: where_no_woman, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 11:09:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/686289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Framlingem/pseuds/Framlingem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Germans have a word to describe the chronic affliction many of us suffer from, that insistent urge to be somewhere out there and not here: "Fernweh". It's the opposite of being homesick; instead, it's a pining to be not-home, to be away, way away, because that's where you feel at home.<br/>--Joe Robinson </p>
<p>Winona grows up feeling like the world is too tight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fernweh

Her mother always said she had itchy feet, when she came home late and covered in mud, soaked to the skin and grinning like a wild thing. Itchy feet, and not enough sense to come in out of the rain. _That's not right_ , always thought Winona, _It's not just my feet. My feet are fine._  
  
The next day, there would be another tree, another stream, another street.  
  
When Winona finally learned to drive and got her license, she spent the money she'd been saving since she was twelve on a car. It was old and the repulsor field didn't always work right, back left corner jouncing constantly, but it was _hers_ and the discomfort was all worth it, to go tearing down back roads, to be able to get up and go further than she'd gone before, all the trees and streams and town streets well-travelled, well-explored, mapped forever like invisible wires on her skin, _squeezing_. She didn't need to ask her mother anymore when she needed to go. It was glorious.  
  
When she was eighteen, she stood in a geography classroom and gazed at the wall-map of the Earth in modified Mercator projection she'd been staring at all year. _It's so big_ , she thought. Then she turned to the other wall, covered in a centuries-old photograph of the Earth taken from near where Serenity Colony would be, taken by an astronaut whose name escaped her. _It's so small_ , she thought, and the next day she shook off her mother's hand and walked into the Starfleet recruitment office, and told them she was going places.  
  
The day she set foot aboard her first berth, and into the Stellar Cartography lab with its giant window on the stars, she knew she was home. Except when she was on leave, she never had to wake up in the same place twice again. The wires on her skin loosened a little, and the itch beneath it lessened. The ship itself was old, and didn't gleam, but she loved it with every cell of her.  
  
George always understood. He loved their home, and loved his roots, but he loved her and understood that to love a wild thing is to never quite be able to keep it.   
  
Winona loved the open spaceways. She loved her son, and wanted to share them with him when he was old enough; but she'd come home, and he'd misbehaved again, and how could she reward that? Every time before the shuttle landed in Iowa, she'd close her eyes and think, _Please, Jimmy, please give me a reason to reward you_ , but then he'd have failed in school, not showing up for an entire month, or stolen a car, and her heart broke a little, and when leave was over she'd kiss him and get back on the shuttle alone.


End file.
